Hearts Across Forever, Different Times, Changing Dreams

Publishing is hard work. Losing a publisher you've had for many years is difficult. Retrieving and re-releasing the lost books is a challenge. That is why I am so excited to have my first novel, Hearts Across Forever, available once again with a new publisher, High Tide Publications.

This is a book I began long ago and revised several times on its way to publication. It was right before the 21st Century began, and cell phones were not all around us. I still used my 35 mm Minolta with real film inside.

As I wrote this first book, I was traveling to Jamaica several times a year. I fell in love with the beauty of the tropics and tried to overlook the poverty through which we drove en route to lush settings and glorious beaches. These dramatic locations were the subjects of my painting as well as my writing. It was a magical time.

In the midst of inventing my story, I discovered Dr. Ian Stevenson and the fascinating work he was doing at the University of Virginia as he discovered and interviewed children with past-life memories. I also met and became good friends with Dr. George Ritchie who detailed his riveting after-death experiences in his book, My Life After Dying. I was compelled to draw imagined past-life events into my story.

Because I was as an artist, studying at Virginia Commonwealth University who had to visit New York City and follow the work of artists there, I tied my heroine's job to that city. However, Kathryn wasn't completely sold on living in the big city. Although she didn't realize it at first, she was falling in love with the tropical setting of Jamaica with so many memories. Her dreams were changing as the story evolved.

Revising my book for re-release, I wondered if I should make changes to take it into the 21st Century. I decided not to. After all, the story is about people from a different time, the late 20th Century. Hearts Across Forever has a beautiful new cover, created by Jeanne Johansen, but the characters still live in an earlier century. It doesn't seem right to change them.

If you buy a copy of Hearts Across Forever, I will be happy to send you an autographed book plate. Send a SSAE to me at P.O. Box 182, West Point VA 23181.

Please let me know what you think about my book.

Reincarnation Conventions and More

"Road Once Traveled" MM Sikes

Reincarnation conventions have become popular in our country, according to a segment on CBS Sunday morning. Dr. Brian Weiss, a specialist in hypnotic regression, was one of the speakers at a recent convention in New York. I have read about Dr. Weiss and learned that he was skeptical about reincarnation when he regressed one of his patients who instead of going back to an earlier age went back to a previous lifetime. He is said to have lost his skepticism when the patient began channeling about the space between lives.

According to the CBS segment, 18% of Americans believe in reincarnation. Those who believe in reincarnation think we are spiritual beings having a human experience. The theory dates back nearly 4000 years.

 Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia doesn't trust past-life regression. He believes the results of that therapy are unreliable. However, his research at the university is on reincarnation and focuses on children. Many of the children he has interviewed remember past lives that ended violently. These children often have scars or birth defects featuring an injury from the prior life they recall. Photographs of these children's scars were part of the program.

Some of the research I studied for my novel, Hearts Across Forever, was done by the late Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia.